Meow House Theatre

David Sedaris was, not surprisingly, just as funny and self-deprecatingly charming as I expected he’d be at the Nov. 2 reading at Boston’s Symphony Hall. (I wonder if he normally considers himself charming? I bet he does not. Of course he is wrong.) I got there and after a slight confusion over nobody at the box office being able to find any record of my ticket (bought online on Oct. 24), finally someone came up with my name and hand-wrote me an entrance pass. I was a bit disappointed at that, as a real ticket would have looked so much nicer inside my little book I put these things in, for remembrance. It’s not exactly a scrapbook; it’s just a place to put things with little notes, so that in 20 years I’ll remember where I was on a certain night. Anyway, I went in and thought I’d better go to the bathroom first (by the way, the lighting in the Ladies’ Room there is phenomenal–my hair appeared to be the most spectacularly beautiful shade of red ever and my skin was porcelain-figurine perfect) and after exiting I went back to check and make sure he was doing a signing after, as he normally does. “Oh, he’s doing it over there [vaguely waving], or he was, a few minutes ago; he might have left by now.”

WTF? How’s about letting people know that ahead of time? (It turns out he also would be signing after the reading, but I didn’t know that and wasn’t told, and thought my chance to meet him for a few seconds would be gone.) So I dashed over and saw him behind a table, and the line wasn’t too long (perhaps 40 people in front of me), and I silently thanked myself for taking a cab instead of the T and thus arriving with time to spare.) I really wanted to get his autograph. I had not seen him live before, but I’ve been told that he does not do a mere signing like a lot of other authors. He actually talks to people, sometimes for several minutes–this is why the line moves so slowly–and he doesn’t just write his name in your book: he draws pictures and writes little jokes about whatever you two might have talked about or makes interestingly mysterious remarks (as is what happened to me), for which you only figure out later on their meaning.

There were two guys together two groups ahead of me, and during their conversation David asked a question to which the first guy responded that he was there with his partner (pointing to the other guy), and upon hearing that this was a gay couple, David took a book (not one of his own) out of the bag at his feet and said he had brought them a present, something like “for being the first gay couple I’ve met at this performance.” They laughed. Then it was the next group, a mother and daughter it sounded like, who got clever drawings in their books and a request for them to explain to him the phenomenon known as Craisins. Then it was my turn.

I had brought two books with me, Holidays on Ice and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, the former of which I’ve had for many years and the latter I just bought last week. I thought it would be nice to have him sign both books: my very first David Sedaris book and my very last one (well, so far, anyway). He drew Holidays toward himself first, and while exchanging greetings he asked me who I was at the reading with. After telling him in mock humiliation that I was there by myself, that I did not have a date and could not find anyone to turn into my “date” even for only as long as it took to sit through a reading with me, he picked up a woodblock stamp he had next to him and wrote “To Mary Elle” above the title and then below it imprinted the stamp, which said “With Sympathy” in curlicued Edwardian script, and then wrote “for your terrible lonliness” next to it (yes, that’s how he spelled it) and said he was so sorry for my relationship troubles. That made me totally crack up. He then took the other book and asked who that was to be made out to. When I said it was for me also, I think that surprised him a little. Perhaps that’s kind of weird, to want two autographs at the same time. Other people had brought more than one book too but they, at least the people I could eavesdrop on ahead of me in line, were having them signed for other people not present, nor for themselves. But he again wrote out “To Mary Elle” and then below the title added a line whose significance would not become apparent until later:

To Mary Elle
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
with a Nicaraguan feeling

He asked what I did for a living and although I do not actually make enough at it to live, I said I was an actor, which I thought was more interesting and certainly much easier than explaining my regular job. He asked what kind of acting and what plays I have been in, and I said I mostly do improvisation. He said knowingly, “Oh, well that’s why you can’t find a date–all the men in improv are gay.” (**laugh** and SO not true) Then he picked up a velveteen leaf cutout, a few of which were strewn upon the table, and put it inside the book on the title page, with his signature and mysterious inscription, and handed the volumes back to me with a big smile.

I walked to my seat and read the inscriptions. “With a Nicaraguan feeling” … what did this mean? What an unusual country to just pick out of the blue, I thought, to remark upon in a stranger’s book. I wondered what made him write that. I do not look Nicaraguan, or South American, since I’m not sure Nicaraguans can be definitively identified from among a representative group of citizens from that continent, at least not by the average non-Nicaraguan. I did not have on clothing or jewelry that might inspire someone to think “Nicaragua.” This puzzled me and I assumed that the inscription was, as so many David Sedaris essays seem to be, some figment of a memory that only he was familiar with, at least until he chose to write about it for all the rest of us to learn.

Then he began the reading and I think the first thing he read was a story about a class he took many years ago at the Art Institute, called something like “Politics in Art,” which he thought was going to be one thing but turned out to be the study of photographs of the kind of art made on underpasses and abandoned buildings by truants using cans of spay paint. The only saving grace of the class was his fascination of listening to the teacher’s dramatically pretentious Spanish-accented pronunciation of certain words, such as “Latino” and “Chicano,” and most inexplicably alluringly to him, “Nicaragua.” So that’s where the inscription came from!

He read actual stories for about an hour and a half (living in France with Hugh; a tough-talking New York landlady who took an unexplainable fondness to him; the dilemma faced in how to be sensitive to a grieving stranger seated next to him while flying First Class and yet not appear unsympathetic by watching the in-flight movie while said seatmate is sobbing next to him); and and then he read entries from his legendary diary, which he has kept for 30 years. I was surprised to learn he now types it on “a com-pu-ter” since he had written an essay in Me Talk Pretty One Day about his disdain for all things technological, at least in the realm of putting one’s thoughts to paper, and his great love for his IBM electric typewriter, the kind most of us had been glad to junk by the time Windows 3.1 came around, and how he had been horrified when Amy showed up at his place one day with what was obviously, by his description of it as “candy-colored,” an early iMac laptop. That was years ago, based on the publication date of Me Talk Pretty, and I suppose things must change even for him, despite his having said “computer” with three distinct and slightly unfamiliar syllables, like one of the newly programmed animatronic robots in The Stepford Wives, the same way most other people would pronounce “dextromethorphan”: a familiarity with the concept since it’s an ingredient that everyone has read on their cough syrups labels for years, but with a slight hesitation since it’s not a word anyone would find necessary to actually vocalize on a regular basis.

“I used to hand-write it, and then I typed it on a typewriter, but now I use a ‘com-pu-ter.’”

He also answered a few questions from the audience, including “What’s your advice to an aspiring playwright?” which garnered an answer referring in part to Amy’s and his experiences writing plays in Chicago, years ago; and “What’s your brother up to?” He’s probably the only famous person around whose family’s daily activities are of as much interest to his readers as his own experiences are.

David Sedaris will be be back in Boston on October 12, 2008, and touring in about 30 other cities starting that fall. Go see him. You will not regret the cost of the ticket.